The weak production of Λ particles in muon and tau scattering from protons Original Research Article

We calculate the differential cross sections for the weak strangeness changing processes, μ−+p→Λ+νμ and τ−+p→Λ+ντ. We do the muon reaction from near threshold to 5.0 GeV and the tau reaction at 20.0 GeV. This relatively high energy is made necessary by the short lifetime of the tau lepton. We make use of SU(3) relations and experimental data so that the calculation presented is phenomenological in nature. We obtain the contributions from the form factors including interference terms with a view to extracting those parts of the cross section which are suppressed in the corresponding electron induced reaction due to the small size of the electron mass. Finally we discuss what might be learned from these reactions and the conditions necessary for performing these experiments.